A slender middle aged brown skin man with a ridiculous mustache squeezed in a very narrow space taught English at a college that trained students in agricultural sciences. Mr. Purshotham, the English teacher wore either a light Green or Beige trouser alternatively week long and never wore a short-sleeve shirt. The 50- year college surrounded by paddy fields located in a rural area was known for high quality education in farming techniques. Nine semester hours of English was a requirement to graduate from the college. That’s lot of hours in English for a degree in farming

Submitted:Jun 23, 2012
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My Dreaded English
Teacher

Subba Rao

A slender middle aged
brown skin man with a ridiculous mustache squeezed in a very
narrow space taught English at a college that trained students in
agricultural sciences. Mr. Purshotham, the English teacher wore
either a light Green or Beige trouser alternatively week long and
never wore a short-sleeve shirt. The 50- year college surrounded
by paddy fields located in a rural area was known for high
quality education in farming techniques. Nine semester hours of
English was a requirement to graduate from the college. That's
lot of hours in English for a degree in farming

Mr. Purshotham knew
exactly how a particular vowel or consonant shall sound in a
word, in the process his jaw bones rotated in many directions
like a well oiled machine. His eyes showed an expression
demanding recognition from the students how good he was in
pronouncing words as part of good English. Students, mostly from
farming community didn't give a damn about his accent; they just
want a good grade in English that doesn't mess up their overall
GPA. But Mr. Purshotham was unwilling to give a good grade; he
gave 'A' to handful of students, 'B' to some in a class of over
180, most ended up either with 'C' or worse 'F'. That messed up
GPA in the very first year of a long 4-year program. This didn't
bother Mr. Purshotham as he walked on the campus with a flare of
self confidence as the only person on the campus that spoke
Queens English. Teachers in other fields of specialty
improvised by whatever means to compensate their short comings in
English. For example, the Biochemistry teacher just read from his
notes in the classroom not making any eye contact with the
students at all, students in Animal Science class paid more
attention to the fancy foot work of the teacher while he
delivered the lectures, they named him appropriately 'Foot and
Mouth,'; while lecturing, the Botany teacher used palm of his
both hands as if he was protecting himself from a Dodgeball;
the Civil Engineering teacher marched around with his long thin
limbs as if he was in a marching band just to explain the
difference between King-Post and Queen-Post Truss. Not Mr.
Purshotham, he has a vast vocabulary in his English repository;
leaning on the black board with his hands folded in front in a
relaxing mode, the words flowed from his mouth like water from a
fully opened faucet and articulated so well as if he was singing.
He took a month to complete Nicholas Nickleby; he made
impressions changing accent accordingly to suit each character,
the students heard more about Charles Dickens, the author of
Nicholas Nickleby than the characters in the novel. "Perhaps
Dickens had this in mind when he wrote this line," he would say
when Purshotham finish reading a paragraph. Mr. Purshotham
discussed Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge," with so
much passion some students really fell ill. When it came to
works of Somerset Maugham, the students had enough from Mr.
Purshotham. "For crying out loud we came here to get training in
farming practices not majoring in English," thought Juggernaut
sitting in the last row.

After getting C twice,
Juggernaut had enough from Mr. Purshotham, he thought Purshotham
was going too far with his tough grading and decided to ambush
him in his own game. Juggernaut got lucky and found few glaring
grammatical mistakes in a handout Purshotham gave to the
students, when Juggernaut pointed out, he was embarrassed and
asked "what grade you got in previous semesters?" "Sir, because
of your kindness, I got two Cs that screwed up my GPA so far,"
replied Juggernaut. "Well, expect an improvement this semester,"
said Purshotham twitching his thin mustache.

"There he was, stop him,
I denounce you Purshotham for screwing up my GPA, you and your
Queen's English go to hell," shouted Juggernaut loudly watching
an old man walking in front at a distance in the daily market, he
was carrying a small burlap sack of vegetables with long Snake
Gourds hanging out from the mouth of the sack as if they may jump
out of the bag anytime.

"Get up Juggernaut, you
were day dreaming again, you had too much Turkey for lunch, slept
as if somebody knocked you down," his brother Paramesar tried to
wake up Juggernaut from his afternoon nap.